Double Downer Budget Won’t Build a Better Future

The Budget is a
double downer for all New Zealanders – it’s visionless
and attacks much needed public services. Finance Minister
Bill English has shown he has no idea how to “build a
better future”, says PSA national secretary Brenda
Pilott.

Mr English has failed the basic test of
leadership. He’s set big targets but has no plans for how
to get there. Instead he’s gone back to his default
setting of more cuts to the very services that New
Zealanders need to help them through tough times. He
doesn’t even have the courage to spell out where the cuts
are going to fall. Instead he leaves it to his Chief
Executives to make the tough choices that he won’t make
himself.

Rather than take decisions himself, he’s trying
to disguise $650m worth of cuts by forcing departments to
fund KiwiSaver and superannuation themselves. They will not
be able to avoid cutting front line services.

“The
Government needs to come up with a better plan than simply
cutting public services and throwing those who provide them
on the scrapheap. More public sector pain means more pain
for New Zealanders who rely on vital public
services.”

Brenda Pilott says this government is
obsessed with the debt crisis myth despite New Zealand
having the third lowest government debt in the OECD. Most of
New Zealand’s debt is private money owed mainly to
Australian banks and cutting public services and selling key
strategic assets won’t help that at all. In fact what
would help is more KiwiSaver investments – the very thing
Bill English is attacking. Brenda Pilott comments on
the Budget on Youtube:

“The BPS and the Treasury’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update show we can deliver our promises while running sustainable surpluses and paying down debt...

“Today we are announcing the full details of the Government’s Families Package. This is paid for by rejecting National’s tax cuts and instead targeting spending at those who need it most. It will lift 88,000 children out of poverty by 2021." More>>

The spending lavished on Defence projects to meet the risks that could maybe, possibly, theoretically face New Zealand in future is breath-taking, given how successive governments have been reluctant to spend even a fraction of those amounts on the nation’s actual social needs. More>>

Today the Minister of Education announced that the Government has stopped the controversial National Standards system of assessment and declared them an arbitrary measure which did not raise children's achievement as the previous Government intended. More>>

The People’s Commission on Public Broadcasting and Media, was crowdfunded and was informed by an extensive consultation, seeking the views of both those working in Media as well as gathering input both online and in person from ordinary Citizens. More>>

ALSO:

Prime Minister Jacinda Adern was joined by Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and Minister for Children Tracey Martin to announce the appointment of Adrian Orr as the new Governor of the Reserve Bank and the name change of the Ministry for Vulnerable Children to ‘Oranga Tamariki - Ministry for Children’. More>>

‘Today, we learned the new government has added New Zealand’s name to a proposal designed to lead to foreign investment rules in the WTO at this week’s ministerial meeting in Argentina,’ said Auckland University Professor Jane Kelsey. More>>